England you do not particularly expect to lie on the grass, especially in the evening.  The aspect of the usual English country-houses sufficiently indicates the absence of that informal culture of the open air into which the American villeggiatura generally resolves itself; and one reason why I mentioned just now the excellent dwelling which I visited in the rain was that, as I approached it, it struck me as so good an example of all that, for American rural purposes, a house should not be.  It was indeed built of stone, or of brick stuccoed over; which, as they say in England, is a “great pull.”  But except that it was detached and gabled, it belonged quite to the class of city houses.  Its walls were straight and bare, and its windows, though wide, were short.  It might have been deposited in Belgravia without in the least seeming out of place:  it conformed to the rigid London model.  It had no external galleries, no breezy piazzas, no long windows opening upon them, no doors disposed for propagating draughts.  But, indeed, I have never seen an English house furnished with what we call a piazza; and I must add that I have rarely known an English summer day on which it would have been convenient to sit in a propagated draught.

It seems, however, grossly unthankful to say that English country-houses lack anything when one has received delightful impressions of what they possess.  What is a draughty doorway to an old Norman portal, massively arched and quaintly sculptured, across whose hollow threshold the eye of fancy may see the ghosts of monks and the shadows of abbots pass noiselessly to and fro?  What is a paltry piazza to a beautiful ambulatory of the thirteenth century—­a long stone gallery or cloister repeated in two stories, with the interstices of its carven lattice now glazed, but with its long, low, narrow, charming vista still perfect and picturesque—­with its flags worn away by monkish sandals, and with huge round-arched doorways opening from its inner side into great rooms roofed like cathedrals?  What are the longest French windows, with the most patented latches, to narrow casements of almost defensive aspect set in embrasures three feet deep and ornamented with little grotesque mediaeval faces?  To see one of these small monkish masks grinning at you while you dress and undress, or while you look up in the intervals of inspiration from your letter-writing, is a simple detail in the entertainment of living in an ancient priory.  This entertainment is inexhaustible, for every step you take in such a house confronts you in one way or another with the remote past.  You feast upon picturesqueness, you inhale history.  Adjoining the house is a beautiful ruin, part of the walls and windows and bases of the piers of the magnificent church administered by your predecessor the abbot.  These relics are very desultory, but they are still abundant, and they testify to the great scale and the stately beauty of the abbey.  You may lie upon